A twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column on California public affairs.

Monday, February 8, 2016

INITIATIVE ‘SILLY SEASON’ MAY NOT BE SO SILLY AFTER ALL

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016,
OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“INITIATIVE ‘SILLY SEASON’ MAY NOT BE SO SILLY AFTER
ALL”

Just a few months ago, it seemed as if
the November election might produce the silliest “silly season” ever seen in
modern California politics. But the essential good sense of shoppers around the
state appears to have prevented that.

It’s shoppers at big box stores like
Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, Walmart and Costco who provide the bulk of voter
signatures needed to qualify initiatives, referenda and recalls for the ballot.
Sometimes there’s a fear that these shopper/voters will sign just about
anything merely to get the petition carriers near the entrances out of their
hair.

Plenty of silly measures were proposed
for this fall, but virtually none made it through the process of gathering
365,885 valid signatures, even though that’s the lowest total required in many
years, the result of the very small turnout in the 2014 election.

One would have required display of the
California state flag in the position of first honor when both it and the
American flag are on view at public buildings from schools to stadia. Not only
would this be offensive to many, but it also would have no discernible
benefits.

There was also a plan to ban political
contributions of all kinds from out of state donors to most campaigns conducted
in California. Federal offices like U.S. Senator and members of Congress would
have been exempt. Likewise, a plan to change the title of California’s chief
executive from governor to president didn’t come close to getting the
signatures needed to put it on the ballot.

Neither did a proposal to demand that
anyone proposing a ballot measure advocating the killing of gays and/or
lesbians (there was just such a proposal; it also went nowhere) would have to
attend sensitivity training or donate money to a pro-gay or -lesbian
organization.

A plan to multiply the membership of
the Legislature by about 100 also failed, but might be back. Another
failure aimed to ban sales of shrimp and other shellfish. This one carried
a $666,000 fine and/or a prison sentence for each sale.

Also not making the ballot were a
couple of referenda, measures aiming to reverse new laws passed by the
Legislature and signed by the governor (still not California’s president). One
would have allowed anyone to avoid getting children vaccinated simply by
stating thast personal beliefs forbid it. Another would have reversed the new
(and not yet in effect) law allowing doctors to administer lethal doses of
drugs to terminally ill patients. A move to recall Democratic state Sen.
Richard Pan of Sacramento for authoring the current law requiring almost
universal vaccination of schoolchildren failed, too.

Some of these ideas would have had to
be taken seriously by their opponents, who in a few cases were ready to spend
millions of dollars fighting them off. Others would simply have cluttered a
ballot that already figures to be the longest ever.

Their absence leaves voters to
consider what is likely to be dozens of very serious ideas, most with significant
consequences.

There could be, for example, three or
more measures to boost taxes. Two aim to extend the levies of the 2012
Proposition 30, which mostly upped taxes on the wealthy. A third would
surcharge tax bills for properties officially valued at $3 million or more, the
new money going to anti-poverty programs. That’s intended as a sort of Robin
Hood system.

Tax cuts are also likely to be present
and a plan to lift the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 might also make the
ballot.

So could a plan to increase the time
of service public school teachers need to earn tenure from two years to five,
and another limiting the pay of non-profit hospital executives to the same
level as what the President of the United States earns – now $450,00 a year.

There are more, with four measures
already assured ballot spots, 73 others now authorized to collect signatures
and almost two-dozen awaiting official naming by the attorney general. The only
one without wide implications is one to require use of condoms in all movie
sexual intercourse.

That’s all silly enough – but it could
have been much worse.

-30-

Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.